


Viridescent, The Miscellaneous Archive

by jacksgreysays (jacksgreyson)



Series: The Six Paths of Tetsuki Kaiza [9]
Category: Inception (2010), InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale, Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-02-03 19:16:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12754491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacksgreyson/pseuds/jacksgreysays
Summary: Or, Some Universes Tetsuki (Probably) Doesn't Go To(The collection of unrelated snippets and ficlets set within the greater Tetsuki Kaiza 'verse. Originally posted on tumblr.)





	1. Or, Tetsuki Fights The Power Rangers (2017-11-17)

Her father is a fisherman in a sleepy town between the mountains and the sea.

They are a small family, but one that must work hard for their existence. She has a part time job and tries to contribute to their household of two.

Sometimes her father brings her presents–she remembers owning grander trinkets; jewelry and weapons and treasures that were both–but she likes the smooth driftwood and gleaming sea glass very much.

One day her father brings home a medallion–green encircled by gold.

///

School is school, mundane as ever, and this school is even more so. She keeps her head down and doesn’t act up and so she is invisible.

Being unseen means she can see everyone else.

She makes no friends, but neither does she make any enemies.

This does not hold true forever.

///

In her dreams a new voice appears… perhaps voice is the wrong word.

Maybe desire would be better: intent. Memory. Ghost.

But she is already haunted by many ghosts and so Rita’s rage does not overwhelm her.

///

Mr. Scott used to be drinking buddies with her father.

Used to, because now Mr. Scott is far too busy trying to hold his son back from the brink. Jason Scott is throwing his life off the rails, train wreck in the making, his potential wasted.

Or so her father says. He looks at her with grateful, relieved eyes:

She is not nearly so much trouble.

///

She gets hungry for gold. It gnaws at her stomach, her brain, Rita crooning instead of screeching, and so she decides to indulge.

But why murder and pillage when stealing is far more efficient and fun?

It’s just like stretching muscles long left unused.

///

Whatever language Rita speaks doesn’t translate very well. They are concepts more than words, emotions more than syllables.

And also, alien visual cortexes are different from human.

Yellow is still yellow (energy and recklessness), blue is still blue (loyalty and instincts), green is still green (sharp and unyielding).

But Rita’s red is more like Earth’s orange, pink closer to red, and black more of a dark purple. Or maybe indigo? Or maybe both, she never could tell the difference.

As pigment, that is.

///

She is still invisible–especially helpful now that the town is abuzz with news of the robberies–and so she notices connections bloom where before there were none.

A group where before there were only individuals.

That way lies trouble, she thinks; her father’s relieved eyes.

She turns away.

///

She just nabbed a couple of gold candlesticks from the town pawn shop, crunching into them like carrots as a midnight snack, and so Rita is as calm as she ever will be.

Because of that, the second voice deigns to make it’s presence known. It’s much quieter, beaten down and scared, but perhaps after almost two weeks of keeping Rita at bay it feels brave enough to speak.

Power Rangers, it says.

Energy Warriors, it means.

Flame Guardians, she understands.

///

But Rita’s voice is louder, angrier, and far less sentimental.

Power with a price. With a limit. Synergy–the sum greater than the parts.

The parts nothing without the sum, or so Zordon would have his team believe.

Five is powerful, yes, but not as stable as six.

She wanted independence. She wanted freedom. She wanted.

///

Months pass. The five rangers grow stronger.

More slowly, perhaps, without an enemy to prompt it, and confused at the lack of one, but stronger they grow all the same.

Synergy, the second voice whispers every time she passes one of its fellows

She supposes she can see the appeal of it, but they are looking for a fight, not a friend.

///

After her final robbery within the town–the awful cash for gold place with unfair rates–she realizes she’s made a mistake.

Not with the theft itself–no, she’s a professional… or she was one, once–but with her management of the situation.

The rangers are languishing without an enemy, but if what Rita says is true of the Zeo Crystal then someday there will be others who want it for themselves.

They need to be ready.

They need to be made ready.

///

The mountains are theirs, she can respect that, will not take that away from them. But she’s not going have the battle in the middle of town where casualties and fatalities are just waiting to happen.

The sea, then.

Just as well, it brought her the medallion.

///

Genjutsu against the sleeping rangers is ludicrously simple, but how to make it suitably frightening yet goading is the hard part. Rita and some of her other ghosts are more than happy to contribute.

The Dead Ships. Impending, if belated, doom.

Come stop her if they dare.

///

She announces that she’s going out, surprising her father who is on his own way out for work.

She never goes out, she has no reason to do so.

Fishing is best at night.

“By yourself?” He asks, worried. Then, suspiciously, “On a date?”

Ah, the perils of being the single father of a teenage daughter.

“No,” she says, “I’ll be meeting some people from school. Group project.”

She’s not really lying.

///

With the amount of gold she’s consumed–thefts branching out to neighboring cities–making a simulacrum of Rita is easy. Trusting her with it is far less so.

“There is a line,” she says. “If you cross it I will do worse than kill you.”

“Don’t think you can command me, Earthling wretch,” Rita responds.

They both know Rita doesn’t really mean it, but she definitely means hers.

///

Out in the water Rita and Goldar fight the Power Rangers in their Zords.

The sea froths from the battle, angry, ships bobbing about frantically with the waves.

There is a line.

The rangers form their own–protecting their town, struggling and straining against their enemy.

On the shore, she forms another.

///

Synergy, the second voice whispers.

Not yet, she responds.

Synergy requires trust.

///

Rita is defeated–Megazord something not even she could dream of–and as the simulacrum is slapped out beyond the atmosphere, her voice returns. Muted and exhausted; not exactly happy but… satisfied.

As a reward, there’s an ostentatious chandelier in the mayor’s house that’ll make quite the meal.

She did good, she’s earned it.

///

From her desk right next to Kimberly Hart, she notices the drawing.

She huffs a small, quiet laugh, trapping the noise into her shoulder: no need to draw attention to herself at this point.

A lightning bolt.

The significance doesn’t translate, but still. She’s touched.

///

Every Tuesday after school, Billy Cranston comes to her part time job–the legal one, that is.

He orders the cheapest thing available and sits at the smallest table and does his homework until, eventually, one of his fellow rangers calls him.

He doesn’t tell them why he does this every week. For nearly as long as they’ve known him, this is just something he does, one of his habits.

But she knows the truth: he doesn’t like donuts.

She can keep this secret, too.


	2. Or, Tetsuki Follows Her Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompted by lionheadbookends: "Peeling away from your flesh leaves a lot of detail behind. The shape of “You” isn’t the same as the shape of your body; the shape of you grows to fill whatever space it’s given. And when I step away from things, just for a bit, I feel bigger and bolder than I have ever grown inside. But I take the bags beneath my eyes with me, and the scar on my left arm (though I don’t take the arm to go with it). I take my aches and my pains with me; I only leave behind the things that aren’t me at all."

She closes her eyes, feels the sunshine warm on her face, and takes a deep breath; the spring breeze carries hints of winter still, cool and slightly damp, but the scent of early blooming flowers layers over that.

Her mobile phone buzzes in her pocket, a staccato vibration, a summoning. The man who pays her income but will never be her Boss, the man who supports her lifestyle but doesn’t provide her survival, the man who determines her waking and sleeping hours but never her thoughts or dreams.

She opens her eyes, raises a hand, and lifts a gun to her temple. Inelegant, but efficient. It reminds her of home.

She pulls the trigger.

She wakes up.

///

She is born in the late autumn months, as both year and century draw to an end. She is born to Fuyuko and Toichi Kaiza in a hospital technically but barely within Tokyo. She is born a wailing, red-faced, and thoroughly average baby girl.

What happens to her after is far from from average.

///

For all that dream-sharing is a largely international industry, it would inaccurate to say that it is one homogenous community. They do not always match official country borders, but there are enclaves within dream-sharing with its own customs and cultures and rules.

Japan is one such enclave.

For the most part, so long as there is no immediate conflict of interest, foreign dreamers may conduct their business without any interference from local entities. This rule is but the second that broadly reigns over the Japanese dream-sharing community.

The first is simply: do not mess with Azuma.

///

The thoroughly average baby girl that will one day be known in certain circles as Azuma does not have a good or even average childhood. She tries to run away from her parents at age six and manages to elude the very expensive private detective service her parents hired for two weeks before getting caught.

Despite the broken arm, it is not the last time she does this. It will be another eight years and twenty or so attempts before she manages to definitively escape her parents’ clutches and that perhaps has equal amount to do with them getting bored as it is with her expertise.

She is searching for people and places that don’t exist anywhere but her own mind, but at least it’s better than staying where she was.

///

Saito of Proclus Global has three executive assistants, all of whom speak a minimum of four languages, are qualified as triple-A certified bodyguards and emergency medical technicians, and have extensive counterintelligence training, among other varied and useful talents.

Though the woman known as Azuma can also be described as such and is frequently seen in proximity of Saito, she is not one of said executive assistants.

Her talents are a little more varied and useful than that.

///

The knowledge she has is helpful–blades and human vulnerabilities the same no matter what, languages and critical training filtering through as needed–but she remembers having powers beyond physical possibility and that’s what ultimately betrays her.

A teenager, no matter how skilled or smart or shrewd, will never be completely safe in the criminal underbelly of a big city. A lone teenager without any ties is a tempting target for many parties.

When they grab her, she fights. Foolishly, she thinks she can win. She forgets she doesn’t have endless lightning at her fingertips, energy bolstering her muscles, superhuman and unstoppable.

When they grab her, she loses. She is just a teenager, and they are a unscrupulous, government funded company trying to pioneer an entirely new method of espionage.

///

Azuma’s patron is a matter of public knowledge. It is not a weakness.

Most professional dreamers in Japan have a primary sponsor–another company, a yakuza family, a government official–and while Azuma’s patron does not have technically have the most influence in Japan, well… Proclus Global. Money is its own kind of power. And that’s not even including what Azuma can bring to the table.

Dreamers in Japan know better than to go after Azuma’s patron. Even non-native dreamers who have heard secondhand of Azuma know better than to attempt it.

Which is why, when Cobol Engineering tries to hire extractors to go after Saito, they are forced to outsource to an unhinged suspected murderer, his loyal point man, and a mediocre architect.

///

The early stages of Somnacin were riddled with problems. Unstable, inefficient, addictive–anything that could have gone wrong, did.

Her body hated every second of it, every drop that coursed through her veins. She spent the next few years in a constantly nauseated state of misery, sick and shaking, more asleep than awake and so terribly weak.

Physically, that is.

Mentally, everything she had lost was regained. The power that eluded her in the waking world flowed easily at her command, the dreamscape the most welcoming place she had been in years.

The other subjects washout–brains fried, suicide, crumbling under the pressure–but she remains. No, more than that, she thrives.

///

Azuma is not an extractor; she is not a point person or architect or chemist either. She can do all of those jobs, of course, but she thinks dividing roles that way is arbitrary and limiting. She is a professional dreamer, with all the responsibilities and capabilities involved.

Her outside reputation is as a forger, though that isn’t quite right either.

Even in dreams, no one can do what Azuma can.

///

Tetsuki is happiest when she dreams.


	3. Or, Tetsuki Goes Feudal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part of the [Ask Box Things You Said event](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14533413/chapters/33579345), 32) things you said I wouldn't understand

“Consider me your private tutor,” says the girl seated at the table beside Kagome’s family. The weirdest thing isn’t that the girl is a stranger and yet has settled in as if she’s always had a place, or that she’s not far from Kagome in age and yet Mama and Grandpa look so trusting of her, or even that she’s wearing a sharp black suit more suited to business men than teenage girls in their very traditional shrine house.

No, the weirdest thing is the way that, when Kagome enters the house after an exhausting and filthy two weeks in the feudal era, Inuyasha just a few steps behind her, the girl doesn’t seem surprised at all.

She can definitely see Inuyasha–the both of them had been flat-footed, hadn’t thought to be wary of strangers in the house proper–but she keeps her eyes on Kagome.

“No worries,” the girl adds, after Kagome and Inuyasha have exchanged an entire conversation of looks, “I’m very discrete and very good at my job.” Mama nods, reassured.

“Which is… my private tutor?” Kagome asks, baffled. It’s true that her grades have been slipping what with all the absences in favor of time traveling, demon-slaying adventures, but getting her a private tutor seems ineffective at best and a hindrance at worst. She’s not entirely sure what Mama is thinking.

“Yes. We’ll make quite the warrior priestess out of you yet.”

—

The private tutor, Reborn, as she prefers to be called, is only more bewildering the longer Kagome gets to know her. She prowls around the shrine–looking for what, Kagome doesn’t know–barely bats an eye at Inuyasha even when he bares his claws at her, and has set up a makeshift archery range towards the back of the property with an array of targets and an alarming pulley and rope system.

“Traditional kyuudo is, of course, lovely and useful in its own way. An internal core of peace and discipline is nothing to scoff at,” Reborn lectures even as she physically herds Kagome toward the archery range. Kagome, who has just returned home from school after a grueling day of exams, is in no state to put up much of a fight. Nor is she in a state to go through with some kind of archery gauntlet, either.

“But it’s not terribly practical, now is it?” Reborn asks as she finally places Kagome inside of a small circle denoted by a rope braided with paper. “In a world of creatures much stronger than you, the only way archery will be able to do anything is if you’re fast and accurate.” She hands Kagome a bow and steps back to where a series of ropes hang down.

“Hit one hundred targets and protect your circle,” Reborn says, a bright, expectant, and somewhat sadistic smile spreading across her face. She tosses what looks like a water balloon up in the air and catches it; Kagome doesn’t think the water balloons are filled with water.

Kagome tries to back away, out of the circle, and finds that she cannot. “You didn’t give me any arrows!”

“One hundred targets,” Reborn almost sing-songs in response, “I won’t let you out a moment sooner.”

—

After a grueling several of hours of manifesting spiritual energy into arrows, trying and frequently failing to hit the moving targets, getting covered in slime that somehow reminds Kagome of that one fight against a slug youkai but far worse, Reborn finally breaks the barrier.

Then she breaks out the gardening hose even though it’s late fall, nighttime, and the water is no doubt barely above freezing. “It would be rude to track slime into the house,” Reborn scolds, “Mama already has so much to do. And plus, a warm bath will just be a quick sprint away; surely you’ve had much worse during your travels.”

True, but Kagome’s not used to having to deal with that in the modern times!

“Now, what was your first mistake?” Reborn asks pleasantly even as she blasts Kagome with frigid water.

She screeches at the temperature, “You’re awful!”

“Maybe,” Reborn acquiesces with an easy shrug, “But that doesn’t answer my question. If you really didn’t want to go through this entire ordeal, your first mistake was not breaking the barrier.”

“But you said–”

“I said I wouldn’t let you out until you hit a hundred targets–which took far longer than I would have expected, we’ll work on that–but I didn’t say that you couldn’t let yourself out.”

“But I don’t know how to,” Kagome argues, teeth starting to chatter. Futilely, she wraps her arms around herself for warmth.

Reborn raises an eyebrow at that, an almost disappointed look gracing her face. Then she sighs, shakes her head, and tosses a towel directly at Kagome’s face. “I guess we’ll have to work on that, too.”

—

After a bath and dinner, right before Kagome tries to speak to Mama privately about the whole Reborn situation–namely, how to get rid of her–the devil herself stops her.

“In comparison to my predecessor, I’m being kind,” Reborn says, in pajamas and bare feet, hair soft and loose and slightly damp–the soft hallway lighting of Kagome’s home and no slime balloons in sight–she really does look like a normal teenage girl and not the youkai sent to torture her in modern times.

The smile Reborn gives this time is rueful, regretful, “I suppose such a standard isn’t hard to beat given he used to literally shoot us with guns–” an alarming statement that she brushes right over, “–but the thing that he messed up from the beginning was never telling his student the intent behind every awful, cruel lesson. I won’t make that same mistake, mostly because I don’t have the luxury to do so.

“He could follow his student in his adventures and if things really got tough, not only beyond the limit but beyond capabilities, then he could step in and help,” at this Reborn meets Kagome’s eyes, “I can’t do that with you. I have to make you strong enough to stand on your own. And I know you have your friends, your own guardians, but they shouldn’t have to worry about protecting you all the time. If anything, you should want to be stronger so that you can protect them, too. Lead them, even.

"If that’s not something that you want, then go ahead. Tell Mama to send me away. I wouldn’t want to teach someone like that anyway.” At that, Reborn steps back, bare feet padding towards the spare room, leaving Kagome alone to process her thoughts.

She talks to Mama.

—

The next day, Kagome–with only a little complaint–steps into the circle, bow in hand. Mama and Grandpa and Souta all watch from a safe enough distance away, the remains of a  picnic set up as they get ready for the main event.

And Reborn, smiling, bright, expectant, and somewhat sadistic, says, “Because you’ve had a nice rest a good lunch and your wonderful family to cheer you on, now you have to hit two hundred targets!”


End file.
